Eyes On: Valkyrie Profile

Share.

We view PS2 and PSP trailers, plus a mysterious third trailer.

By Anoop Gantayat

The announcement of new entries in the Valkyrie Profile series came out of nowhere this past week, coinciding perfectly with timing for the Jump Festival, the annual Tokyo-based comic show where Square Enix tends to show off its latest product. The PSP remake of the original Valkyrie Profile and the PS2's Valkyrie Profile 2 were shown in trailer form at Square Enix's Jump booth. Both trailers were shown in two sections of the booth: Square Enix's main trailer theater and as part of a "limited" premium showing in a small, closed-off theater.

The set of trailers began first with a look at the PSP remake, Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth. This first ever trailer for the game starts off with live action footage of an elderly lady and a young girl whom we presume is meant to be the main character, Lenneth Valkyrie. The trailer breaks off to CG clips of Lenneth, eventually leading to a array of in-game shots.

Some bad news: rather than a remake, Lenneth appears to be a port of the PlayStation game, complete with PlayStation level visuals. Developer tri-Ace has made the game run in wide screen and appears to have upped the framerate a bit, but there's still no mistaking this as a new game.

On the bright side, though, Valkyrie Profile was one of the PlayStation's best looking titles, and when run on the PSP's tiny screen, many of the visual problems will probably disappear. The original's battles were known for having lots of visual effects, and these appear to have carried over to the PSP version. Plus, the game includes new CG movies, along with event scenes that connect the original with its PS2 sequel, so those who want a refresher, or those who never played the original, may want to keep an eye out on Lenneth.

Of the two trailer clips, Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria was the bigger draw. Square Enix showed off quite a bit from the game, from voiced event scenes to full gameplay segments. Gameplay seems to be 2.5D -- that is, everything is 3D, but the gameplay takes place in two dimensions. We saw sequences of the main character, Silmeria, running through towns, forests thick with foliage, and even a snowy mountain top that was being pounded by a blizzard. Silmeria has a double jump and can warp between points of the world.

The trailer also shows a few short battle sequences. The game seems to allow for four members in your party at once. While we can't comment on specifics, the battle system's interface resembles that of the original, suggesting that we can count on a similar experience.

Tri-Ace is known as a power-house of PlayStation 2 development (Star Ocean 3 and Radiata Stories certainly looked good), and the developer's years of experience shows with Valkyrie Profile 2. The game's characters look particularly nice, resembling hand-drawn artwork closely. In fact, the Valkyrie Profile 2 trailer features no CG what-so-ever, and we've got no complaints about that.

The Valkyrie Profile premium theater.

Those who chose to wait in line for the premium showing were given a Valkyrie Profile calendar and were treated exclusively to a third trailer. This mysterious trailer starts off with the title "Valkyrie Profile," then breaks off into footage that looks far too good to be a PS2 game but not solid enough to be pre-rendered CG. We got the feeling that we were seeing a next generation installment in the Valkyrie Profile series, but when we asked the staff on hand, they seemed to genuinely not know what we were talking about.

The mysteries of that third trailer aside, the Valkyrie Profile showing left us excited to at last revisit one of Square Enix's final PlayStation gems (actually, it was just Enix at the time). While the PSP version looks too close to the original PSX version for our liking, it should provide a refresher course for when part 2 hits the PS2 some time next year.